The New York Times - USA (2020-11-15)

2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2020

CORRECTIONS

PAGE 19

CROSSWORD

THE MAGAZINE, PAGE 78

OBITUARIES

PAGES 28-

WEATHER

PAGE 26

The Newspaper

And Beyond

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VIDEO

In a new “Anatomy of a Scene,”

the writer and director David E.

Talbert narrates a soulful musical

sequence from “Jingle Jangle,” the

Netflix holiday extravaganza

featuring Forest Whitaker and

Lisa Davina Phillip.

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AUDIO

On the latest episode of “The

Argument” podcast from Times

Opinion, Nate Cohn of The Upshot

joins the hosts Ross Douthat and

Michelle Goldberg to talk about

why election polls were off, and

the law professor Rosa Brooks

discusses what happens if Presi-

dent Trump doesn’t concede.

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November 15, 1970.It was a rotten situation. A 45-foot whale carcass had washed ashore

near Florence, Ore., and officials had to get rid of it somehow. The eight-ton behemoth

was simply too big to bury, so they opted instead to blow it up. A half-ton of dynamite was

meant to reduce the corpse to meaty tidbits for lucky gulls and other scavengers. But the

plan backfired, spewing blubbery chunks on curious bystanders and crushing a parked

car. This May, Florence residents again chose not to bury the episode, naming a new city

park Exploding Whale Memorial Park.

Subscribers can browse the complete Times archives through 2002 at timesmachine.nytimes.com.

On This Day in History

A MEMORABLE HEADLINE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

DEAD WHALE IS DYNAMITED

One day in April, working from home like

millions of others, Amy Virshup, The New

York Times Travel editor and leader of the

At Home team, joined the art director

Andrew Sondern and the writer Adriana

Balsamo for a needed video conference.

Their agenda: fold a double sheet of The

Times into a hat.

Creasing paper and tearing tape for a

story is “not something I imagined in my

career I would be doing,” Ms. Virshup

joked.

Imagination is exactly what fuels her

team every week for an At Home feature

known by its editors and designers simply

as “the activity,” a craft, game or other

project in which readers learn how to turn

the physical newspaper into a unique D.I.Y.

creation. This week, it’s a game involving

airport codes. Previous activities included

a doll, a roller coaster for a ball and a

coronavirus piñata. There was even some-

thing called a Flibber (more on that later).

So far, At Home has produced some two

dozen of these activities. The breadth is a

testament to the team’s creativity — and

the most challenging part of the weekly

installments, said Christy Harmon, the

section’s photo editor (and an avid at-home

crafter), who leads the project.

“There’s not one straight path,” she said.

“We try to mix it up so it’s fresh every

week.”

The feature began in the spring, when

The Times introduced the At Home section

to help readers cope with sheltering in

place. Mr. Sondern and another art direc-

tor, Mary Jane Callister, proposed the

activity as a way that readers could inter-

act with the newspaper and pass the time.

Before long, staff members were folding

their Sunday section into headwear.

“One of the things we try to do in the

section is offer people a whole panoply of

things,” Ms. Virshup said. Some offerings

are serious, like advice on emotional

health. “But we also want to offer people

some fun, some levity and joy,” she added,

“and I think that the activity does that

really well.”

The team pulls ideas from a variety of

sources. The Times’s Games team regu-

larly contributes, as does the Brooklyn-

based craft blogger Jodi Levine, who spent

nearly two decades working in the craft

department at Martha Stewart Living.

Suggestions also come from readers; the

nonprofit MathHappens kicked in a way to

transform origami cubes into a mathemati-

cal puzzle, and Dazzling Discoveries, a

STEM education center, reached out about

how to build a catapult.

Other desks at The Times have focused

on the process of creating, of course.

T Magazine’s “Make T Something” video

series enlisted artists to upcycle the news-

paper into objects like a handbag or a

sculpture in under an hour. At Home’s take

is accessibility — no experience necessary.

Simplicity is a must. Boiling an activity

down to the allotted black-and-white half

page of news print is no small task, so after

a writer has broken down the steps and an

illustrator or photographer has repre-

sented them visually, it’s time to put the

editorial and design elements to the test.

To ensure the directions are clear

enough, team members often tap their

children or colleagues to try them out.

“We are our own full-service department,”

Ms. Harmon said.

After publication, the staff will often get

feedback on a certain project, sometimes in

the form of pictures of paper-folding

adults. Which brings us to the Flibber.

Ms. Virshup was alerted to the whimsical

object — a cross between a drum major’s

baton, a pompom and a palm tree — by a

reader who recommended a 1964 children’s

book called “How to Make Flibbers, Etc.:

A Book of Things to Make and Do” by the

author and illustrator Robert Lopshire.

Ms. Virshup mentioned the idea to her

team, who found the Flibber’s flappy frivol-

ity too good to pass up. The very week that

staff members were preparing the activity,

another reader wrote to recommend it.

“What are the odds?” Ms. Harmon said.

Now, Ms. Harmon and her colleagues

frequently get emailed pictures of Flibber-

wielding children. “Seeing people actually

make the projects and send them in is so

fun,” Ms. Harmon said. “It’s nice to see the

full circle of what you’re producing.”

Inside The Times

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

One activity in At Home showed how to use the newspaper to create a form of origami.

CHRISTY HARMON/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Reinventing the Paper, Every Week

By TRACY MARSH

Learn about the latest activity, a game involving

airport codes, in this weekend’s At Home section.

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